Merchanter's Luck

“Five minutes,” he said, on mark. Allison gave him another look, as if to judge his sanity, diverted her attention back to the board.

The seconds ticked off. His Dubliners, he thought. Possibly they would begin it all again where they were going. Maybe they would do more than they had already done. In one part of his soul he was cold afraid. But he was always afraid. He was used to that. He knew how to adjust to things he was afraid of, which was to grin and bluff—and he had that faculty back again.

“Minus forty-five seconds.”

“All stable,” Curran said.

“We’re going,” Allison said, and that was that: she had uncapped the switches.

(Ross… it’s not me this time. But she knows what she’s doing. In most things. Let’s go, then. The first time—without my help. She’s good, Ross… they all are. And I don’t know where we go from here. They don’t know either. I’m sure of that. And I think they’re scared of what I’ll make them be…)

The vanes cycled in, Lucy tracking on the star that gave them bearings, and they went—

—in again, a pulse down that made itself felt all along the nerves…

And no need to move, no need: Allison was there, giving orders, doing everything that ought to be done. “Dump,” she ordered: comp, on silent, was blinking alarm. Sandor performed the operation, neat pulses which slipped them in and out of here and now, loaded as they were, shedding velocity into the interface, while the dark mass lent them its gravitation, pockmark in spacetime sufficient to hold them… friendly, dangerous point of mass…

They made it in, making more speed than they had used at the last point… Allison’s choice. “Will she handle it?” she asked on that account.

“Ought to,” Sandor said. “In a hurry, Reilly?”

No answer.

“It’s lonely here,” Curran said. “Not a stir anywhere.”

“Lonelier than the average,” Allison said. “Didn’t they say they were monitoring all the points?”

No answer from any quarter. Sandor took the water bottle from beside the console, took a drink and set it back again. He unbelted.

“Going back to my quarters,” he said. “Good luck with her, Reilly.”

“Alterday watch to controls,” Allison said. “Change off at one hour.”

Maybe there was something she wanted to say. Maybe—he thought, in a moment of hope—she had come to her senses. But there was nothing but fatigue in her face when she had gotten up from controls. Fatigue and a flushed exhilaration he understood. So she had gotten the ship through: that was something to her, He had forgotten the peculiar terror of a novice; had taken Lucy into jump for the first time when he was fourteen. Then he had been scared. And many a time since then.

He walked to his quarters without looking back at her and Curran and the others, solitary… back to the museum that was his cabin, and to the silence. He closed the door, keyed in on comp with the volume very low.

“Hello, Sandy,” it said. That was all he wanted to hear. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he said back to the voice. “Still alive, Ross.”

“What do you need, Sandy?”

He cut the comp off, on again. “Hello, Sandy. How are you?”

He cut it off a second time, because while they could not access the room cha

He showered, wrapped himself in his robe, went out to the galley—found Allison and Curran, still dressed, standing waiting for the oven he wanted to use. He stopped, set himself against the wall, a casual leaning, hands in pockets of the robe, a studious attention to the deck tiles.

A clatter of doors and trays then. He looked toward them, reckoning that they were through. Watched them pour coffee and arrange trays for the rest of them. “Here,” Allison said to him, “want one?”

He passed an eye over them: four trays. “I’ll do my own, thanks. It’s all right.”

“Galley’s yours.”

He nodded, went to the freezer, pulled an ordinary breakfast. His hands were shaking: they always did that if he was late getting food after a jump. “Did the jump real well,” he said to Allison, peace offering while she was gathering up the trays.

Small courtesies had to be examined. She looked up, two of the trays in her hand while Curran went out with the other two. Nodded then, deciding to be pleased. “Better,” she said, “when I can do all of it.”

She had to throw that in. He nodded after the same fashion, not without the flash of a thought through his mind, that it was several days through the nullpoint and that they might have something in mind. “You’ll be all right,” he said, offering that too.

She went her way. He cooked his breakfast, shivering and spilling things until he had gotten a spoonful of sugar into his stomach and followed the nauseating spoonful with a chaser of hot coffee. That helped. The tremors were at least less frequent. The coffee began to warm his stomach—real coffee. He had gotten used to the taste of it, after the substitutes.

The oven went off. He retrieved his breakfast, sat down, sole possessor of the galley and the table. It was a curious kind of truce. They retreated from him, as if they found his presence accusatory. And he went on owning his ship, in a solitude the greater for having a ship full of company.

When? he kept wondering. And: what next? They could go on forever in this war. He kept things courteous, which was safest for himself; and they knew that, and played the game, suspecting everything he did.

He wandered back to the bridge when he was done. He had that much concern for the ship’s whereabouts. The Dubliners sat on the benches at the rear, having the last of their coffee—a little looser than they had been, a little more like Krejas had run the ship, because it was safe enough to sit back there with Lucy on auto. Not spit and polish enough for some captains; not regulation enough: there was a marginal hazard, enough to say that one chance out of a million could kill them all before they could react —like ambush. Unacceptable risk for Dublin Again, carrying a thousand lives; with ample perso

Nothing. Nothing out there. Only the point of mass, a lonely gas giant radiating away its last remnant of heat, a star that failed… a collection of planetoid/moons that were on the charts and dead ahead as they bore, headed toward the nadir pole of the system. Nothing for vid to pick up without careful searching: the emissions of the gas giant came through the dish. But no sign of anything living. No ship. That was nothing unusual at any null-point. But Mallory had made a point of saying that the points were watched.

He straightened and looked at the Dubliners—Curran and Allison on their feet, the others still seated, no less watching him. “Got our course plotted outside the ring,” he said quietly, “missing everything on the charts. Old charts. You might keep that in mind. In case.”

“You might come across with the keys,” Curran said.

He shrugged. Walked the way he had come, ignoring all that passed among them.

“Stevens” Curran’s voice pursued him.

He looked back with his best i

“No,” Allison said after a moment. “Partners. That’s the way it works.”